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The UK's only independent think tank devoted to higher education.

Blog

The HEPI Blog aims to make brief, incisive contributions to the higher education policy landscape. It is circulated to our subscribers and published online. We welcome guest submissions, which should follow our Instructions for Blog Authors. Submissions should be sent to our Blog Editor, Josh Freeman, at [email protected].

  • Will the Augar Report’s recommendations stem the decline in part-time study?

    28 February 2020 by Claire Callender

    This blog was kindly contributed by Claire Callender, Professor of Higher Education at both Birkbeck University of London and UCL, Institute of Education where she is Deputy Director of the Centre for Global Higher Education. Part-time undergraduate higher education study helps transform lives and drive economies. It is central to…

  • Can universities learn anything from the start-up sector?

    26 February 2020 by Vincenzo Raimo

    This blog was kindly contributed by Vincenzo Raimo, Chief Relationship Officer at Unilodgers and a former Pro-Vice-Chancellor. Having recently left university employment for the tech start-up Unilodgers, I am having to adapt to very different ways of working and (re)learning lessons which might also be valuable to some of my…

  • Visit planning: my top 10 tips for hosting ministers and MPs

    25 February 2020 by Diana Beech

    This guest blog has been written in a personal capacity by Dr Diana Beech (Head of Government Affairs at the University of Warwick). Diana was Policy Adviser for higher education to various Ministers for Universities and Science (Sam Gyimah, Jo Johnson and Chris Skidmore – twice!), a role she fulfilled…

  • Universities at the Crossroads

    24 February 2020 by Lucian J Hudson

    This blog was contributed by Lucian J. Hudson, former Director of Communications at The Open University, University of Oxford and Foreign & Commonwealth Office. Lucian has co-authored a new paper with Iain Mansfield, which Policy Exchange has published this morning. This paper is based on more than 50 interviews with…

  • How is university governance changing?

    21 February 2020

    Many people do not appreciate just how huge the UK university sector now is. Together, it is worth around £100 billion a year to the country and supports nearly one million jobs. Some of the larger individual institutions have income and expenditure well in excess of £1,000,000,000 a year. Universities…

  • What about me? International student attainment in UK higher education

    20 February 2020 by Susan Smith

    This blog was kindly contributed by Susan Smith, Associate Dean (Education and Students) at the University of Sussex Business School. All graphs in this article use data from the HESA Student Record. As the higher education sector prepares to help the government realise its ambitious target of 600,000 international students…

  • How should the higher education sector seek to persuade our new Ministers?

    19 February 2020 by Nick Hillman

    As we take stock of the Whitehall reshuffle and get to know the new Ministers responsible for the higher education sector, it seems like a good moment to think afresh about how to persuade policymakers most effectively. There is a lot of good advice on this issue available from recent…

  • Girls just want to learn languages?

    18 February 2020 by Megan Bowler

    This blog was kindly contributed by Megan Bowler, author of HEPI Report 123 ‘A Languages Crisis?’. Megan is in her third year at Oriel College, Oxford studying Classics. A recent report by the Education Policy Institute (EPI) and the British Council draws attention to the fact that there is a…

  • The employment of PhD graduates in the UK: what do we know?

    17 February 2020 by Sally Hancock

    This blog was kindly contributed by Dr Sally Hancock, Lecturer in Education at the University of York. This blog features some of her research supported by a Society for Higher Education Newer Researcher Award (reference: NR201609). The dataset was prepared for analysis by the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA). In…

  • What do the Labour leadership candidates think of higher education?

    16 February 2020

    The 2019 election result signalled a significant change in British politics. It brought about the end of the period of minority government, with the Conservatives winning the largest majority of any party since the early 2000s. The day the election result was announced, Jeremy Corbyn stated he would be standing…